The Right Scoop has posted video with an open microphone that shows the Romney press corps “coordinating questions to ask Romney," with CBS reporter Jan Crawford saying, “no matter who he calls on, we’re covered on the one question.” They wanted to make Romney take credit or walk back his statement condemning Obama weakness after the embassy attacks: “Do you stand by your statement or regret your statement?” NPR’s Ari Shapiro – the one who won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance – is one of the reporters planning their agenda on the clip.

As one who worked in the White House, it should be said that reporters do sometimes coordinate to get a sense of what they want out of a press conference. But when has the public gotten a sense these journalists have done this to hold Obama accountable? (He didn't take questions this morning, so there could be no plotting today.)

Off camera, you can hear CBS’s Crawford strategizing:

JAN CRAWFORD: That’s the question....Yeah that’s the question. I would just say do you regret your question.

ARI SHAPIRO, NPR: Your question? Your statement?

CRAWFORD: I mean your statement. Not even your tone, because then he can go off on –

SHAPIRO: And then if he does, I think we can just follow up and say ‘but this morning your answer is continuing to sound' –

Then the feed is cut off. Crawford later added, “No matter who he calls on, we’re covered on the one question.” A man who is not Shapiro states, “Do you stand by your statement or regret your statement?”

There’s nothing undemocratic or "corrupt" about journalists working together to decide what a story line is. But that story line can turn out to be a very biased line – as in expressing disbelief that Romney is “doubling down” on his Obama critique. Reporters sometimes mock the idea of a media "conspiracy," but chats like these are certainly collaboration.

People often expect that reporters are competitive in gaining a scoop -- but time in the press corps can convince you that reporters seem more nervous about straying from the journalism of the pack. They may be competitive in booking guests, but they're often not competitive in establishing the theme of the day. They tend to unite on that.

What matters is the end product -- were the reporters fair in their choice of questions? Clearly, conservatives felt this story line sounded more like an attack on Romney than an investigation of the sad events in Benghazi. Jim Geraghty of National Review was tweeting: "Third damn stupid question about the TIMING of Romney's statement. How about some substance?... is no one going to ask about WHAT OUR POLICY MOVES SHOULD BE IN RESPONSE?"

One can cite other, darker examples of coordination, including coordinated censorship – as in Mickey Kaus describing how the press tried to walk away from the Paula Jones sexual harassment charges against Bill Clinton, or the absolute failure of the press corps to coordinate to pressure Clinton repeatedly (if necessary) to answer whether he had raped Juanita Broaddrick

PS: Crawford also says at the very end of the clip, “I shouldn’t have my notebook visible, should I? It says ABC News on it!”

Propaganda Update: TV Networks Will Be Asked to Boost ObamaCare In Plots of Their Top Shows

By Tim Graham | September 15, 2012 | 10:29

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Abby Goodnough of The New York Times is reporting as the California state government is setting up its ObamaCare exchange, the exchange has hired a PR firm (with federal government money).

"Realizing that much of the battle will be in the public relations realm, the exchange has poured significant resources into a detailed marketing plan — developed not by state health bureaucrats but by the global marketing powerhouse Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, which has an initial $900,000 contract with the exchange," she wrote. Ogilvy's plan is to tap major network TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Modern Family" to sell Americans on the health care law:

Hollywood, an industry whose major players have been supportive of President Obama and his agenda, will be tapped. Plans are being discussed to pitch a reality television show about “the trials and tribulations of families living without medical coverage,” according to the Ogilvy plan. The exchange will also seek to have prime-time television shows, like “Modern Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and Univision telenovelas, weave the health care law into their plots.

“I’d like to see 10 of the major TV shows, or telenovelas, have people talking about ‘that health insurance thing,’ ” said Peter V. Lee, the exchange’s executive director. “There are good story lines here.”

Although the exchange will not start advertising until next year, the California Endowment, a foundation that has spent $15 million promoting the law, is running newspaper and television ads, including one in which the television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz exhorts viewers to “get educated, get engaged, get enrolled.” That campaign has targeted Hispanics, who make up more than half of the state’s uninsured population.

Goodnough added "The exchange itself has so far been financed by three grants, worth $237 million, from the federal government. Most of the money is committed to consultants, including Accenture, which has a $327 million contract to build and support the initial operation of the enrollment portal."

Remember that the liberal media was furious that the federal government would promote the war in Iraq inside Iraq, and furious that the Department of Education would hire PR flacks like Armstrong Williams to talk up Bush education programs on cable news. So where is their outrage at the idea that federal grants would promote ObamaCare advertising inside network TV entertainment programs?

About the AuthorTim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.

In a hearing yesterday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, an Obama administration official admitted what all of us already knew through credible reports in foreign media: Amb. Chris Stevens died on September 11 "in the course of a terrorist attack." As Karen DeYoung reported in today's Washington Post, National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen told the committee that "the people involved in the violent assault" on the consulate in Benghazi hailed from "several militant groups, including localized extremists in eastern Libya as well as affiliates of al Qaeda."

An al Qaeda connection to a deadly attack that killed four Americans at a consulate on the anniversary of 9/11 should be front-page news, but it was buried on page A8 of the Post with the bland headline "Intelligence official cites 'terrorist attack' in Libya."*

Story Continues Below Ad ↓DeYoung also noted that at least one senator is skeptical of Olsen's claim that the attack was spontaneous and exploitative of a demonstration against an anti-Islam film (emphasis mine):

The hearing came amid mounting questions about security at the consulate and whether the State Department was insufficiently responsive to previous attacks in Benghazi and the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

“I’m just stunned and appalled that there wasn’t better security for all of the American personnel at that consulate, given the high-threat environment,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Olsen, Associate Deputy FBI Director Kevin Perkins and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the hearing.

Collins also sharply disagreed with Olsen’s statement that the attack did not appear to be planned. “Based on the briefings I have had, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion,” she said. “I just don’t think that people come to protests equipped with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and other heavy weapons. And the reports of complicity — and they are many — with Libyan guards who were assigned to guard the consulate also suggest to me that this was premeditated.”

Collins is not alone in expressing skepticism about the Obama administration's official line. On Sunday, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), a former FBI agent, expressed skepticism that the murder of Stevens and three other Americans was a spur-of-the-moment attack engendered by outrage at an obscure YouTube video.

It's difficult to imagine the Post and other media outlets treating such a hearing cavalierly if this had happened under George W. Bush's watch and the Republican president had peddled the official story that the Obama White House is now.

Embassy and consulate security in Libya and other volatile countries in the Middle East is a vital issue that should be given front-page attention by the media. Doing so, however, casts the Obama administration in a potentially negative light, something the Obama-friendly media do not want to risk in a close reelection year.

President Barack Obama participates in a town hall hosted by Univision and Univision news anchors Jorge Ramos (left) and Maria Elena Salinas (center) at the University of Miami, Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla. | CAROLYN KASTER~AP

Updated: September 21, 2012 2:32AM

Each new day seems to bring further evidence of the unremitting failure of President Barack Obama’s economic and foreign policies. Yet the presidential contest remains even, due in large part to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s failure to articulate a specific economic reform agenda and to the mainstream media’s obsession with what Obama-friendly commentators see as Romney’s gaffes.

The media narrative is Romney has had a bad couple of weeks with less-than-artful or ill-timed remarks about the growth of government dependency and Obama’s failed foreign policy. Still, Obama has had his own bad couple of weeks, on the economic front as well as abroad — though the media haven’t spotlighted it as they have with Romney.

New Census Bureau figures show median household income fell or was flat last year in 37 states — mirroring data released a week ago showing national median household income is down to mid-1990s levels. This drop came amid the Obama recovery, the weakest rebound from a recession in modern history.

Another report filled in details behind the nation’s persistently high unemployment, 43 months above 8 percent. Small businesses are a prime generator of jobs, yet fewer new firms are being established. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of startups peaked at 667,000 in 2006 and has declined ever since, reaching 548,000 in 2009 and dropping again to 505,000 in 2010, the first full year of the recovery.

“The state of entrepreneurship in the United States is, sadly, weaker than ever,” observes Tim Kane of the Hudson Institute who analyzed the numbers. He cites “anecdotal evidence that the U.S. policy environment has become inadvertently hostile to entrepreneurial employment.” That includes uncertainty over taxes and regulations, among them the looming new taxes and rules from ObamaCare.

Further fallout from ObamaCare: It will raise taxes on 6 million Americans for failing to meet its insurance mandate, reports the Congressional Budget Office. That’s 50 percent higher than the previous estimate. Most of that tax hike will fall on the middle class.

More evidence of the failure of Obama’s economic policies was the Federal Reserve’s announcement of a third round of “quantitative easing” — Fedspeak for printing money to boost Wall Street trading in hopes that will trickle down to more jobs. How effective it will be remains to be seen, but it will keep interest rates at near zero, a disheartening blow to seniors trying to live off their life savings. The Fed policy also will likely fuel commodity prices, meaning higher food and energy costs further eroding household budgets. That is, unless a possibly looming global downturn — meaning more unemployment — depresses oil prices.

The news is no better on foreign policy. Even the administration is backing away from U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s farcical claim that the wave of anti-American riots were a spontaneous reaction to an obscure Internet video. And Obama’s “reset” with Russia is faring no better than his outreach to the Muslim world. Moscow kicked out the U.S. Agency for International Development, which promotes democracy and human rights, claiming it meddles in Russian politics.

From the American kitchen table to the U.S. business environment to the unemployment line to the Arab street to Russian diplomacy, Obama’s policies have been a failure. Who wants four more years of that?

As the Middle East erupts in flames and as his foreign policy scheme is burned up with it, President Obama refused a meeting with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and instead went on the David Letterman show. One might think the President's neglect of his duty was a bad thing, but apparently it was perfectly fine with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

On Sept. 19, during an America's Choice 2012 segment on CNN's Newsroom, Wolf Blitzer was full of words of understanding for Obama's choice of Letterman over Israel's Prime Minister. It just made good sense, Blitzer imagined, for Obama to ignore his duties as America's director of foreign policy in order to go on a late-night comedy show.

Apparently Blitzer understood perfectly that getting votes should take precedence over foreign policy.

Tonight, CBS aired a 60 Minutes interview with President Obama. But curiously enough, the news magazine show did not air a clip of Obama admitting to interviewer Steve Kroft that some of his campaign ads contain mistakes and that some even "go overboard."

60 Minutes did, however, post the clip online:

CBS describes the clip this way: "President Obama says some of his campaign ads might 'go overboard' or contain mistakes, but most of them simply highlight the differences between him and Gov. Romney."

"Look, the fact-checkers have had problems with the ads on both sides," Kroft says to Obama in the unaired clip, "and say they've been misleading and in some cases just not true. Does that disturb you? I mean, some of them are your ads."

Obama responds: "Do we see sometimes us going overboard in our campaign, are there mistakes that are made, areas where there is no doubt somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? You know, that happens in politics."

Kroft responds: "Aren't the American entitled to the truth? Or a better version of it?"

"The truth of the matter is, most of the time we're having a vigorous debate about a vision for the country," Obama says. "And, you know, there's a lot at stake in this election. So is it going to be sharp sometimes? Absolutely. But will the American people ultimately have a good sense of where I want to take the country and where Gov. Romney takes the country? I think they will."

Indeed, it's a newsworthy admission, but one that didn't make it into the news magazine's final cut.

Two-dozen conservative activists and media personalities on Tuesday urged members of their respective groups to switch off the "biased news media," claiming in an open letter that establishment media are "out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda."

Though these groups frequently complain about a left-leaning media bias, they claimed in the letter that the political slant this cycle is unprecedented.

"In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called 'news' media to decide the outcome of an election," wrote Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, and other conservative leaders.

They ticked off a litany of grievances against the news media, saying they've been "shamefully smearing" Mitt Romney over the course of the election.

Among their charges were that the media have painted conservative ideas as "extreme;" downplayed the "horrendous economic conditions" in the country; focused more on shortcomings in Romney's business background than in Obama's record as president; been "pouncing" on missteps by conservatives while "suppressing" gaffes by Vice President Biden; and been "deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks."

According to NewsBusters, part of MRC, the letter was directed at the heads of ABC News, NBC News, CBS News and CNN.

"We the undersigned -- representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations -- are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6," they wrote.

Network representatives have not yet responded to a request for comment.

This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts, and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome. In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called “news” media to decide the outcome of an election.

A free and balanced media are crucial to the health of this country. It is your duty as journalists – as outlined in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics – to “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting,” while simultaneously “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”

There is a reason why the media are viewed with such disdain by the American public, as evidenced by every recent poll on the issue.

You have breached the public trust by willfully turning a blind eye to the government’s public policy failures, both domestic and foreign, while openly and shamefully smearing Gov. Mitt Romney. You are:

• Painting conservative ideas as extreme, while refusing to report the disastrous consequences of liberal programs enacted since 2008.

• Submerging the truly horrendous economic conditions America is facing and focusing only on minor political issues.

• Focusing on alleged shortcomings in Romney’s business record instead of Obama’s record as the chief executive, whose policies contributed to a failed economy.

• Deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks which have put American lives in jeopardy.

• Pouncing on real and perceived missteps by conservatives, portraying them as bumbling incompetents, while suppressing embarrassing and incendiary remarks made by Vice President Joe Biden to prevent him from becoming a liability.

• Portraying conservative opposition to tax hikes as an impediment to deficit reduction while failing to highlight how liberal tax increase policies will cause massive damage to the economy and cause the deficit to explode.

• “Fact-checking” conservatives in order to discredit their arguments while regularly refusing to "fact-check" liberals who are distorting the truth.

We the undersigned – representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations – are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6.

It is time the American people turn you who are offending off, once and for all. You have betrayed their trust.

Where is it written that the media is supposed to be fair and unbiased?

What news organization out there is not biased toward either party?

When are yall going to realize they're just private companies dedicated to selling ad space, and keep viewers, and will do that by playing whatever viewers love/hate - cause that is what people watch?

You don't get mad at Sears because they favor ugly housewares, or Foot Locker becaus they favor Reebok over Nike in their presentation. You accept they're private companies, and you can peruse their products, or not, as a consumer.

we are CONSUMERS of the news media. It's a product we can choose to view, or ignore. Foot locker doesn't have a "duty" to give nike and reebok equal shelf space,and any push for that would violate capitalism. If you're demanding the private media companies espouse a view in a certain way to be more fair... aren't you telling them how to present their product, and thus violating the rules of capitalism?

Stephanopoulos has history of calling presidential debates for DemocratsPublished October 03, 2012FoxNews.com

Ideally, journalists who cover presidential debates should be fair, objective truth-seekers, but tonight’s showdown between President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney may have the deck stacked in favor of the sitting president -- at least when it comes to ABC News’ coverage.

ABC News anchor and chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos will be one of the journalists analyzing Wednesday’s debate for his network, and the former communications director for Bill Clinton has never been shy about his leftist leanings.

According to analysis from the Media Research Center's Newsbusters blog, Stephanopoulos declared victory for the Democratic candidate in eight out of the past nine general election presidential debates -- including Al Gore’s infamous eye-rolling-and-deep-sighing performance in his 2000 debate with George Bush, disagreeing with the majority of pundits who ceded victory to the soon-to-be president.

“Gore dominated,” Stephanopoulos declared after the debate. “It was even the way that he would interrupt Jim Lehrer and say, 'Listen, I want one more word.' He looked like he was dominating, and then again, the issues that the time was spent on, prescription drugs, education, Social Security, even the RU-486 and abortion issue, all of those favor Gore.”

Just last Sunday, during an appearance on "Good Morning America," Stephanopoulos argued that Romney is under “huge, huge” pressure. "He is behind right now. He is behind nationally, he’s behind in all of the battleground states. This is the last big audience that Mitt Romney is going to have with about four and a half weeks left to go.”

Should a journalist who is covering the presidential debates -- one who is ostensibly supposed to be neutral -- be offering such a negative opinion of one of the candidate’s chances in what could be a game-changing night?

Former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel criticized Stephanopoulos’ ascension from politics to punditry.

“The overnight transformation of George Stephanopoulos from partisan pitchman to television journalist highlights a disturbing phenomenon: the progressive collapse of the walls that traditionally separated news from propaganda,” warned Frankel way back in 1997. “Self-respecting news organizations used to pride themselves on the sturdy barriers they maintained to guard against all kinds of partisan contamination.”

For the past 15 years, there are numerous examples of Stephanopoulos championing Democrats with his purportedly “objective” analysis.

“(Obama) comes in at a significant disadvantage on commander in chief,” Stephanopoulos said after the 2008 debates between Obama and John McCain, a former prisoner of war. “People wonder whether he has this experience to be president, to handle national security, and I think on answer after answer after answer, he showed confidence, he showed toughness and he showed he belonged on that stage. ... Bottom line, the winner is Barack Obama.”

Stephanopoulos even gave the edge in 2004 to John Kerry, who went on to lose the election to George Bush. “I think the most important thing that Senator Kerry did stylistically last night is he showed strength in his demeanor,” Stephanopoulos opined post-debate. “I guarantee you that if you didn’t speak English, you walked in and watched the debate last night without the sound on, you would believe that John Kerry was the incumbent, was the president.”

Just last week, Stephanopoulos posted a video on his blog in response to one of his Twitter followers who asked if the momentum of the presidential race could change with the debates.

“(Here’s) the predicament that Mitt Romney faces right now,” explained Stephanopoulos. “You go back to the last 19 elections, in 18 of them the person who was ahead at this point, late September, 40 days out, has won the race,” adding that the former Massachusetts governor's “back is certainly up against the wall right now.”

So, who will win the debate tonight? If you ask Stephanopoulos, history says the odds are 88 percent that he’ll say Obama.

This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts, and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome. In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called “news” media to decide the outcome of an election.

A free and balanced media are crucial to the health of this country. It is your duty as journalists – as outlined in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics – to “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting,” while simultaneously “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”

There is a reason why the media are viewed with such disdain by the American public, as evidenced by every recent poll on the issue.

You have breached the public trust by willfully turning a blind eye to the government’s public policy failures, both domestic and foreign, while openly and shamefully smearing Gov. Mitt Romney. You are:

• Painting conservative ideas as extreme, while refusing to report the disastrous consequences of liberal programs enacted since 2008.

• Submerging the truly horrendous economic conditions America is facing and focusing only on minor political issues.

• Focusing on alleged shortcomings in Romney’s business record instead of Obama’s record as the chief executive, whose policies contributed to a failed economy.

• Deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks which have put American lives in jeopardy.

• Pouncing on real and perceived missteps by conservatives, portraying them as bumbling incompetents, while suppressing embarrassing and incendiary remarks made by Vice President Joe Biden to prevent him from becoming a liability.

• Portraying conservative opposition to tax hikes as an impediment to deficit reduction while failing to highlight how liberal tax increase policies will cause massive damage to the economy and cause the deficit to explode.

• “Fact-checking” conservatives in order to discredit their arguments while regularly refusing to "fact-check" liberals who are distorting the truth.

We the undersigned – representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations – are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6.

It is time the American people turn you who are offending off, once and for all. You have betrayed their trust.

Even when Mitt Romney cancels campaigning and works to provide Hurricane Sandy relief, the media elites are still dropping bombs on him. The hurricane has given Obama "invaluable imagery and opportunity to be seen in command,“ said CNN’s Dana Bash. Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Al Kamen cracked that Romney is “finding that, unlike franks and beans, charity and politics can be a tricky mix.”

The “tricky” part of the mix is the media. Their opportunistic bashing of Romney’s food drive shows it doesn’t matter what the Republicans will do, the media will stick to anti-Romney talking points.

In Tuesday afternoon’s broadcast of "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on MSNBC, Mitchell accused Romney of surreptitious campaigning, and asked what are the true intentions of Governor Romney collecting storm supplies after a hurricane. Mitchell reported, “We checked with the Red Cross. The Red Cross said while they’re always grateful for donations – that this is not what they need or want,” she insisted. “And to now get these canned good from the Romney event in Ohio – and have to first package it – used clothes they have to clean.”

She turned to Washington Post political analyst Chris Cillizza and sneered, "It does seem like a thinly veiled [campaign event] – why Ohio?”

If there’s something Andrea Mitchell is not is “thinly veiled” when it comes to sending a political message.

Mitchell revealed herself, yet again, as a liberal partisan, and someone who borders on absent minded when it comes to common sense. There are 7.5 million people without power, and how dare Mitt Romney try to help those in need?

Mitchell’s MSNBC colleague Martin Bashir added to this anti-charity narrative, going so far as to imply Romney was disobeying the Red Cross. After a clip of Obama speaking at the Red Cross, Bashir asked his guests: “Did you detect perhaps a subtle dig there on Mr. Romney who spent today going against the guidelines established by the Red Cross and holding a campaign rally in Ohio that was dressed up like a charity drive collecting food and other supplies when the Red Cross expressly asked people not to do that?”

As Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters aptly said, “Imagine that. A presidential candidate, who gives millions of dollars a year to charity, does a storm relief event in Ohio, and an MSNBC anchor is disgusted by it because the Red Cross would prefer people donating cash.”

Then on MSNBC's “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” there was another less-than-charming episode of Romney Can’t Win.

Joy-Ann Reid, the former Obama campaign staffer who now runs the NBC-owned site TheGrio.com, insisted “anything he [Romney] does looks almost by nature too political. And he can’t actually do anything. He can’t do anything certainly for Chris Christie. Going around with Mitt Romney and his Secret Service detail through the affected areas of New Jersey would actually cause more problems and wouldn’t help at all.”

But doesn’t Obama have a Secret Service detail, too?

That doesn’t matter to Reid. Obama has power: “whereas going around with the president helps him look at the damage, really view it for himself. He can get something out of doing that with the president. So, I think Romney unfortunately is the odd man out.”

Liberals never really mean it’s “unfortunate” when they argue Republicans just can’t possibly be portrayed as compassionate conservatives.

Did We Forget About Sen. Bob Menendez's (Alleged) Solicitation of Prostitutes in the Dominican Republic?By Matt Vespa | November 14, 2012

As the discussions about sex and sex scandals dominate the media due to the Petraeus affair, one affair the media are strangely silent about is that of New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who was handily reelected last week despite shocking allegations that his idea of an Easter vacation was flying to the Dominican Republican to soliciting sex from prostitutes. Oh, and, like Secret Service agents in Colombia before him, the hookers are saying that he stiffed them on the tab.

The latest development in the Menendez saga, according to Scott Wong at Politico is that:

Middlesex County Republicans alleged that Menendez did not seek permission from the Senate or report several trips he took to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic since 2010. According to the complaint, Menendez took at least four trips on a corporate jet owned by Salomon Melgen, who has donated more than $200,000 to Democrats since the early 1990s, including nearly $13,000 to Menendez.

However, a Department of Homeland Security passenger manifest showed that Menendez was not on the Melgen plane for one of those trips, an April flight to the Dominican Republic.

'It does not appear that Senator Menendez’s apparent acceptance of private jet travel and luxury lodging was permitted by Senate gift rules,' Samuel D. Thompson, chairman of the Middlesex County Republican Organization and a New Jersey state senator, wrote in the complaint. 'Nor does it appear that Senator Menendez disclosed acceptance of this travel and lodging on his financial disclosure form—as he would be required to do even if the gifts were otherwise permissible.

Further, if Senator Menendez solicited prostitution while a Member of the United States Senate, this conduct would be reprehensible.

Yes, it would be, although the broadcast networks have ignored the charges, according to a search of Nexis.

Yet, the Petraeus scandal is a greater one given the CIA director's position of trust and access to classified information. That being said, the media's attention to one sex scandal cannot be a legitimate excuse to completely ignore another one that has been brewing since before the election.

The media shouldn’t go light on Petraeus, but outright omitting the Menendez charges seems to show the media will do their level best to ignore embarrassing congressional Democrats.

The network's Rachel Maddow provided an example of this on her show Friday while describing the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas (video and audio clips after page break) --

MADDOW (after referring to President Obama's visit to Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar): And of course the whole trip to Asia comes in the midst of a very scary flareup between Israel and Gaza. Now, we do not know exactly what started this most recent round of fighting, but we do know that an Israeli air strike killed the top commander of Hamas in Gaza on Wednesday. And we know then that that was followed by rocket attacks aimed at southern Israel and then Tel Aviv and then today, Jerusalem. Israel has been pounding Gaza with air strikes. The attacks appeared today to be rapidly escalating, including signs that Israel is preparing for a ground incursion into Gaza. The New York Times tonight citing reports of Israeli tanks massing on the border with Gaza.

Gee, if only Israel hadn't inexplicably killed that poor misunderstood Hamas commander. Conspicuously absent from Maddow's narrative is any mention of Israel's rationale for the attack -- Hamas targeting Israel with hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza, as they've been doing every year for the last decade. Indiscriminate savagery that does not distinguish between military and civilian targets, in marked contrast to Israel's response, which was to kill one of Hamas's leading terrorists.

Maddow rearranges the chronology more to her liking, claiming that Israel killed Hamas's top commander, "followed" by Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, instead of the actual sequence which was the other way around.

Seeing how this elephant-in-the-room omission about Hamas bellicosity isn't a problem for Maddow, it is too much to expect she'll ever mention another inconvenient fact -- Hamas targeting Israeli civilians with rockets from the same territory Israel reliquished to Palestinian control in 2005. Land for peace, indeed.

Maddow's remarks reminded me of a previous example of her bias against Israel, in December 2008 during an earlier flareup with Hamas -- and for the same reason. Here's what Maddow said (audio) --

But while we're on the wild wide world of scary tour, of course, Israel has started another war. A third straight day of airstrikes on Gaza, the death toll now more than 300 people. Israel says that they are doing this to prevent Palestinians from firing rockets into southern Israel. First of all, there's the question of proportionality as to how many people those rockets have killed versus how many people the Israeli bombing has now killed. There's also the issue of effectiveness. In the midst of this massive air assault killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza, a rocket fired from Gaza today killed a man and wounded seven in the Israeli town of Ashkelon. Effectiveness. Three Israelis were also stabbed by a Palestinian in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank today. Is there a military solution to this problem?

Notice how Maddow did mention the context -- Israel launching air strikes in Gaza in response to rockets being fired at Israelis. This was back when Maddow was on the fringe-left, now-defunct Air America Radio. In other words, she was more balanced in her coverage then, at least when it came to Israel and Hamas, than she is now with a much larger audience on MCNBC.

True to form, however, Maddow grossly exaggerated the number of civilian casualties from Israeli air strikes, as I described at the time.

Well, the FBI says Menendez agreed to pay the prostitutes $500 but then only gave them $100. So, he had sex like a Democrat but is a fiscal conservative like Republicans. That's what we need in Washington! We need more men like that! Yeah. A little different when they're spending their own money, huh?

Irrespective of the levity, it appears from a LexisNexis analysis that through Tuesday, Leno was the first person on NBC to mention these allegations.

Pretty sad when a late night comedy talk show host is in front of his network's entire news division.

But NBC isn't alone.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, ABC's This Week did a six minute interview with the Senator and never brought the issue up. According to LexisNexis, the network has still ignored this matter through Tuesday.

Ditto CBS, CNN, and MSNBC.

It appears the only network interested in this story up to this point has been Fox News.

In print, outside of Florida, only Investor's Business Daily and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review had reported the investigation through Tuesday.

As for wire services, Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, and Reuters have yet to publish a word about this. Only UPI has.

Now in fairness, the Miami Herald on Wednesday broke the news that FBI officials late Tuesday night raided the office of a West Palm Beach doctor alleged to have provided these prostitutes to Menendez. As a result, other news organizations are beginning to report this story.

However, where have they been till now? Would they have been as slow on the uptake if Menendez were a Republican?

CNN teases Rubio segment by asking if water-swig is 'career ender'Published February 14, 2013FoxNews.comShown here is a screen grab from CNN on Feb. 13, 2013, teasing a segment on Sen. Marco Rubio.

It was awkward. It was a little funny.

But a "career-ender?"

That's the question CNN posed regarding Sen. Marco Rubio's water-swig during his response to the State of the Union Tuesday night.

While Twitter had its fun, and Rubio himself even joined in on the teasing, CNN's Wolf Blitzer devoted a segment to examining whether the moment could squelch his seemingly rising career.

"Can a drink of water make or break a political career?" Blitzer asked. "A U.S. senator, possible presidential candidate. We're going to find out, whether he likes it or not."

As a clip of the swig aired, the graphic on the screen then said: "Career-Ender?"

Conservatives ripped the network. Media watchdog Newsbusters called it absurd.

CNN later defended the graphic, saying it was just a joke.

"It was simply a tease (posing a question) leading up to a segment with our political contributors -- when Wolf specifically said no one thinks this will be a career-ender," a CNN spokeswoman told FoxNews.com.

During a panel discussion, Blitzer asserted Rubio's got a "huge future ahead of him." CNN analyst Cornell Belcher, though, claimed the night would haunt him through his career.

"He goes in stylistically, he's sweating like Nixon. He goes for the water in a really awkward way which will, quite frankly, be what's most remembered from this," Belcher said. "Style matters. And he fumbled."

CNN wasn't the only outlet to find the drink of water exceedingly newsworthy.

According to a tally by The Daily Caller, MSNBC replayed the clip roughly 155 times.

The play was indicative of how some outlets tried to turn the awkward moment into something more significant.

"The Rachel Maddow Show" played a loop of the swig over and over again Wednesday night.

Host Al Sharpton even took a drink from a gigantic Poland Spring jug, just to hammer home the mocking.

CNN played the clip 34 times. Fox News played it roughly a dozen times.

All too often when reporters are discussing Democrats caught in scandals, they develop a peculiar speech impediment that prevents them from uttering the "D" word. However, when members of the GOP stumble, the word "Republican" cascades out of the mouths of reporters.

When news broke on February 15 that former Democratic Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was charged with improperly spending campaign funds on (among other items) Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee memorabilia, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network anchors and reporters struggled to get their lips to form the word "Democrat." In 15 total stories on Jackson, reporters failed to utter the "D" word in 11 of them (73 percent). On the February 21 CBS This Morning Jackson was labeled a Democrat, but only in an on-screen graphic.

When word got out that the FBI was investigating New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez's jaunts (that may have included solicitation of prostitutes) with a campaign contributor to the Dominican Republic, the Big Three networks whistled past the scandal by airing a total of just eight stories since the story broke on January 24.

The reluctance to attach the "D" label to Jackson and give limited coverage to Menendez are typical examples of the liberal media's reluctance to tarnish the Democratic Party with its more ethically- challenged members. It's a courtesy that they have not extended to scandalized members of the GOP.

Over the years, the MRC has chronicled the vast disparity in how GOP politicians embroiled in scandals are covered compared to how sullied Democrats are covered, or in some cases, not covered.

The Following Scandal is Rated R (for Republican)

A prime example of network reporters withholding the "D" label came in October 2011. On Halloween of that year, MF Global Holdings filed for bankruptcy with a shady mystery: some $1.6 billion was missing from their customers' accounts. Financial analysts blamed the company's CEO, Jon Corzine, a former Democratic U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey, who became the center of an FBI investigation. In 22 total stories and briefs following the news that Corzine's brokerage firm filed for bankruptcy, and his subsequent testimony before the Senate only once was Corzine's party affiliation mentioned, when Kelly O'Donnell noted it, in her December 8, 2011 NBC Nightly News report.

When former Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer found himself mired in a prostitution scandal in 2008 an MRC study found that within the first week of news coverage Spitzer was only identified as a Democrat 20 percent of the time.

This is in sharp contrast to the coverage former South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford received when he admitted, in 2009, to having flown to Argentina to carry on an extramarital affair. Within the first 24 hours of Sanford's confession he was identified as a Republican 100 percent of the time, during coverage on all the networks. In just the first week since Sanford admitted the tryst there were 49 stories on the Big Three network morning and evening shows.

In 2008 former Democratic Mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick was sent to jail for violating the terms of his bond after he had been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about his affair with his chief of staff, as well as their roles in the firing of two police officers. In 40 total Big Three network stories and briefs on Kilpatrick's troubles in the entire year of 2008 he was called a Democrat on just two occasions, both times on CBS.

In 2008 Kilpatrick, and the aforementioned Spitzer, weren't the only pols caught in sex scandals. A look at the ABC, CBS, NBC morning and evening shows in the days after scandals for Senators David Vitter (for prostitution) and Larry Craig (for bathroom stall toe-tapping) their party affiliation was included on every show. The key difference separating Vitter and Craig from Spitzer and Kilpatrick being that they were Republicans.

When an intern to former Democratic Congressman Gary Condit went missing back in 2001 the networks flooded their programs with stories on the search for Chandra Levy and speculated on Condit's involvement. Curiously, most of these stories did not include the Congressman's party affiliation. An MRC study done at the time looked at the ABC, NBC and CBS's morning and evening news programs from May 14 through July 12 of that year and found that in a total of 179 stories the Democratic label was applied only 14 times or less than 8% of the stories. Six of those labels came paired with adjectives such as "conservative" or "right-wing," so as to distance Condit from other party members.

Even further back from the Condit scandal, the networks, for the most part, covered up the party label of disgraced Democratic Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. On May 9, 2000, the former four-term governor was convicted on 17 counts of fraud and racketeering. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News passed on the news with no Democratic label. The late ABC World News Tonight's Peter Jennings avoided the D-word around his conviction, but later arrived at the party identification indirectly: "He got support from old line white Democrats, blacks and Cajuns. He was one of them."

Democratic Scandal? What Democratic Scandal?

It's bad enough that the Big Three networks forget to label Democrats in scandal stories, sometimes they don't bother to mention the scandals at all. In 2009 a number of Democrats were faced with various scandals that went completely unreported on ABC, CBS and NBC.

Democratic Representative Charles Rangel, the then Chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, was forced to pay $75,000 in unpaid taxes and the House ethics committee launched an investigation into whether a Carribean trip he and four other Democrats took was improper.

Network coverage of the Rangel scandals: 0 stories.

In addition to Rangel, Democratic Congressmen John Murtha, Pete Visclosky and Jim Moran were linked to a scandal involving the PMA Group, a lobbying group that was forced to close in 2009 after being raided by the FBI. According to the New York Times Its top lobbyist was suspected of funneling "bogus" campaign contributions to the aforementioned Democrats in exchange for directing more than $100 million to PMA clients.

Network coverage: Just three stories on Murtha. Visclosky and Moran were never mentioned in any network story.

In 2008 ex-Democratic Congressman William Jefferson lost a run-off election late that year after investigators found $90,000 in cash stuffed in the congressman's freezer. In January 2009 NBC made brief references to the charges against Jefferson in a profile of his successor, Republican Joseph Cao. However, Jefferson's bribery trial that began on June 9, 2009 in which prosecutors said he received $400,000 in bribes to help orchestrate business deals in Africa — was never mentioned on the networks.

The lesson seems clear. While members of both parties have had falls from grace, in the eyes of the Big Three network reporters and anchors, the GOP is the only party that deserves to be punished for the sins of a few.

So, Politico jumped the shark on gay marriage yesterday in reporting that Justice Elena Kagan that she had a ‘gotcha’ moment during yesterday’s hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act.

But a real ‘gotcha’ moment would have been if Politico did their homework and resurrected Kagan’s past comments about gay marriage from 2009, when she was awaiting confirmation to the post of solicitor general and she insisted in the answer to a questionnaire that “there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

…in a rare “gotcha” moment — in the eyes of many in the audience — at the high court on Wednesday.

In discussing the origins of the law, Paul Clement, who represents the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, said that Congress’s key interest in passing DOMA was preserving the uniform treatment of couples in various states at a time when there where indications that some states might allow same-sex marriages.

But Kagan fired back in her questioning, telling Clement that Congress wasn’t preserving tradition, but departing from it when it jumped into the marriage issue. “The only niformity that the federal government has pursued is that it’s uniformly recognized the marriages that are recognized by the state,” she said. Congress’ foray into the issue in 1996 was so unusual that it “sen[t] up a pretty good red flag,” she said.

A short time later, Kagan read aloud from the House Judiciary Committee report on DOMA. “Congress decided to reflect and honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality,” she said, quoting the report.

This apparently drew gasps and laughter from the crowd.

Yet, let’s do a flashback to 2009. Kagan was nominated to be the United States Solicitor General -- the officer of the executive branch who represents the United States in controversies and cases which go before the U.S. Supreme Court -- and was specifically asked about DOMA and same sex marriage (emphasis mine):

1. As Solicitor General, you would be charged with defending the Defense of Marriage Act. That law, as you may know, was enacted by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress (85-14 in the Senate and 342-67 in the House) in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton.

a. Given your rhetoric about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy—you called it “a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order”—let me ask this basic question: Do you believe that there is a federal constitutional right to samesex marriage?

Answer: There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

b. Have you ever expressed your opinion whether the federal Constitution should be read to confer a right to same-sex marriage? If so, please provide details.

Answer: I do not recall ever expressing an opinion on this question.

William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection noted this piece of history on March 25, but wrote about this development as far back as May of 2010 – when he posted that Kagan meant what she said.

In a March 18, 2009 letter (embedded below, at pp. 11-12), which is not publicly available but which [National Review's Ed] Whelan kindly provided to me, Kagan supplemented her written answers at the request of Arlen Specter. Here is the language in the letter seized upon by my critics to show that Kagan really didn’t mean what she said, and really just was opining as to the current state of the law:

Constitutional rights are a product of constitutional text as interpreted by courts and understood by the nation’s citizenry and its elected representatives. By this measure, which is the best measure I know for determining whether a constitutional right exists, there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. These sentences do make it seem as if Kagan walked away from her prior written statement that “[t]here is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

But these sentences are not the full supplemental response. Immediately preceding these sentences was the following language:

I previously answered this question briefly, but (I had hoped) clearly, saying that “[t]here is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.” I meant for this statement to bear its natural meaning.

When the full supplemental statement by Kagan is read in context, there is nothing to suggest that Kagan was walking away from her written statement that there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Of additional interest is that when the Massachusetts Supreme Court found a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage, 18 Harvard Law School professors signed onto an amicus [i.e., friend of the court] brief supporting that ruling. But not Kagan.

So, it seems that when it comes to finding ‘gotcha’ moments that benefit the liberal political agenda, Politico just really isn’t that good. Either that or it isn't interested in challenging the liberal narrative by, you know, actually reporting Kagan's apparently convenient evolution on the question of whether the Constitution provides for a federal right to same-sex marriage.

Where is it written that the media is supposed to be fair and unbiased?

What news organization out there is not biased toward either party?

It is irrelevant if they are supposed to be fair and unbiased. Facts are they are unfair and biased and politicians and citizens are free to point this out, seek alternative news sources and entertainment. Their own bias will kill and make them irrelevant.

Most news organizations are biased towards one party - the Democrats.

But really the Democrats and Republicans are part of one system - the system that makes you think you have a choice. You don't.

Fox News is on a leash. They have already been threatened by the administration and will only go so far.

There is no official media source in the USA that really represents the traditional European / American portion of the population anymore.

Today twenty prominent leaders of the conservative movement have joined NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell in demanding the broadcast networks stop censoring coverage of the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell and the testimony of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates in favor of murdering children who survive botched abortions. [see related video here]

Although abortion has re-entered the news cycle following the passage of pro-life measures in North Dakota and Arkansas, the MRC’s Culture and Media Institute finds that ABC, CBS, and NBC have completely censored both of these outrageous stories:

Since the Gosnell trial began three weeks ago, ABC, CBS, and NBC have given the story ZERO seconds of coverage on either their morning or evening news shows. They have not covered Gosnell once since his arrest in January 2011, and even then, only CBS did so.

After the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates’ testimony in favor of post-birth abortions surfaced on March 29, ABC, CBS, and NBC have committed ZERO seconds of coverage on either of their morning or evening news shows.

ABC, CBS, and NBC have each covered the new abortion laws in North Dakota and Arkansas, ominously describing them as the “most restrictive” in the nation. In response to the broadcast networks’ total and inexcusable blackout of the Gosnell and Planned Parenthood stories, the conservative leaders react:

"The Kermit Gosnell case, in which his abortion clinic has been described as a ‘House of Horrors,’ could have been plucked from the fever dream of Hollywood’s most depraved slasher film writer, and yet ABC, CBS, and NBC have completely censored it out of the news. The Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates’ on-the-record position in support of murdering living children is staggering in its radicalism, and yet ABC, CBS, and NBC have completely censored it out of the news.

"But the new pro-life laws in North Dakota and Arkansas? They draw a critical eye from the broadcast networks.

"The horrific excesses of the abortion industry – exemplified by Gosnell and Planned Parenthood – are major, national news stories any way you look at them. But the pro-abortion liberal media are determined to hide them from the public. The media have a solemn duty to the American people to report the news, not just news that helps the positions they support. It’s unprofessional, it’s disgusting, and it’s inhuman.

"If the pro-life movement were involved in this type of insanity, there would be wall-to-wall coverage from every major news outlet. This cover-up is a national disgrace."

L. Brent Bozell, III, President and Founder, Media Research Center

Diana Banister, Vice President, Shirley & Bannister Public Affairs

Gary Bauer, President, American Values

David N. Bossie, President, Citizens United

David Bozell, Executive Director, ForAmerica

Brian Burch, President, Catholic Vote

Susan Carleson, Chairman/CEO, American Civil Rights Union

Kellyanne Conway, President, The Polling Company, Inc./Woman Trend

Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List

Mark Fitzgibbons, President of Corporate Affairs, American Target Advertising

Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition

Mario Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund

Jim Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association

Gary Marx, Executive Director, Faith and Freedom Coalition

Jeanne Monahan, President of March for Life Education and Defense Fund

Penny Nance, President, Concerned Women for America

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life; President, National Pro-life Religious Council